Robert F Kennedy Jr’s decision to endorse Donald Trump will hearten Republicans, despite Kamala Harris and Tim Walz enjoying a triumphant Democratic National Convention (DNC).
The decision of the former Democratic president’s nephew will be welcomed by Trump, who had been slipping behind Ms Harris in the polls since she replaced Joe Biden at the top of the ticket.
With Mr Kennedy polling at around 5 per cent, his endorsement will leave the two candidates running neck and neck.
Our writers have been periodically plotting their likely winner on a sliding scale, updating their predictions and explaining their decisions as they go.
This week’s update is the first since the Democratic convention and Mr Kennedy’s decision to back Trump.
The Democrats have just pulled off an impressive feat: a flawless, star-studded convention that brought critical viewership just a month after changing their presidential candidate.
Ms Harris made the most of her opportunity to re-introduce herself to the American public. It was not an inspiring speech, but one shrewdly calculated to neutralise her weaknesses.
Time will tell how effective it was, but for now, Ms Harris is leading in the polls and the fundraising stakes. Trump’s torrent of tweets during her address suggest he has been rattled.
The Federal Reserve’s predicted rate cut may also help ease Americans’ inflationary pressures right in time for the election.
But there are roadblocks ahead. With the lead position in the race comes additional media scrutiny. Ms Harris must sit for a rigorous interview, and soon.
She must also survive a debate against Trump, whose unorthodox approach makes him a difficult opponent, and one on whom it will be a challenge to land a blow.
Ms Harris continues to outperform Trump in both poll numbers and political donations, and the DNC had an energy that was lacking from the Republican convention last month.
At the moment, she has the momentum in this race, and while she did not seize the opportunity to set out a grand vision for America in her convention speech, she did enough to keep her party happy.
That said, the end of RFK Jr’s campaign is likely to be a boost for Trump and there is still plenty of time for this election to be upended once again.
Ms Harris’s campaign machine looks all but unstoppable. On the eve of the DNC, The Telegraph’s poll of polls put the VP 3.6 points ahead of Trump – flipping the script from Mr Biden’s final days on the trail just a month ago.
While heavyweights like Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey and the Clintons came out swinging for Ms Harris on the DNC stage, nationally the party base is ever more in her corner. A recent CNBC poll found 81 per cent of Democratic voters were satisfied with her nomination (up from roughly a third for Mr Biden in July).
Even an endorsement from independent candidate Mr Kennedy Jr is unlikely to put an end to Trump’s dog days. Unaligned voters are more inclined to vote for Ms Harris by four points, according to the latest from Morning Consult – although one in five were yet to make up their minds 10 weeks out from election day.
Since Mr Biden bowed out, the presidential election has been the Democrats’ to lose. All Ms Harris needed to do was announce a sensible set of policies to reassure Americans that she has abandoned her formerly quite extreme Leftist positions: defunding the police, the Green New Deal, sanctuary cities – you name a barmy idea, she’s backed it in the past.
But Ms Harris hasn’t said anything, and people are starting to notice. If she does not do something about this, she will take a hit. The other thing Ms Harris needed to do was choose a vice-presidential candidate who would counterbalance her own image as an elite liberal lawyer from San Francisco.
On the face of it, Mr Walz is a good fit: teacher, coach, National Guard service as a top sergeant, not an officer. But there is also the matter of almost two decades in office as Minnesota governor and US congressman: Mr Walz is a big city political operator, not a small-town man at all – and his voting record smells of California, not the Nebraska prairie.
If Ms Harris and Mr Walz cannot make themselves more appealing to centrist swing voters, and Trump can avoid committing any more of his trademark egregious blunders, he might just win this thing.
What a change a month can make. Defying earlier worries that the Chicago-based DNC might prove a repeat of ‘68, the nomination process has passed (largely) without a hitch.
The party is visibly energised by the reality of having Ms Harris onto the ticket, and there was no sign of previously rumoured tensions between the VP and party elders. Ms Harris’s keynote speech was both upbeat and prudent, a marked departure from her 2020 Left-wing posturing.
Indeed, the Democrats have made a convincing play for the title of the patriotic party, with Mr Walz’s folksy references to family, faith and flag pairing nicely with a generally moderate platform of speakers – Bernie Sanders, once a populist darling, spoke to a crowd that could hardly hide their yawns.
But the Democrats are not out of the woods yet. Ms Harris’s new candidate boost shouldn’t take away from the fact this is still an incredibly tight race. Bill Clinton’s quiet warning against overconfidence may prove prophetic for this new, still-untested nominee.
Methodology
Our experts are asked to plot their decision on a scale of 100, where 0 is a Harris landslide, 50 is a tie and 100 is a Trump landslide.
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